Education omnibus bill passes West Virginia Senate committee
Democrats voice their objections
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CHARLESTON -- After five hours of testimony, questions, discussion and demands to postpone the vote, the education omnibus passed out of the Senate Education Committee Friday evening along party lines.
The education omnibus bill, an originating bill developed by the committee, passed 7-5 with Democratic members of the committee voting against it and asking their names be removed from the bill. The Senate Finance Committee is the next stop for the originating bill, which doesn't have a bill number yet.
The committee heard an in-depth explanation of the most recent draft of the bill — the fourth draft in 24 hours — from committee counsel Hank Hager, as well as expert testimony from representatives of the libertarian Institute for Justice and the National Alliance for Charter Schools.
Committee Chairwoman Patricia Rucker, R-Jefferson, told the committee it was her intention to have a vote on the omnibus either Friday or today. Nearly 27 hours after committee members first heard about the bill's details that's exactly what happened. Democratic members expressed outrage at not having the weekend to read through the bill or talk about it with constituents before voting.
"I requested that we have the weekend to go back to our constituents and let us consult with the people who brought us here. That was ignored," said state Sen. John Unger, D-Berkeley. "The was an affront to democracy...the process is flawed."
Unger accused committee leadership of giving the bill to lobbyists before senators had their own copies to look at, something Rucker said was not true.
"This bill did not get given to any lobbyists," Rucker said. "No one had access to it until (Thursday). That's when the draft was done. The folks you are saying got to see the bill, I admit I consulted with and asked for information and advice...that does not mean to imply they got to see a bill."
"That's fine. I'm so glad to hear that," Unger said.
State Sen. Mike Romano, D-Harrison, asked Rucker why the urgency to vote on the omnibus so quickly instead of giving the committee time to digest the 139-page bill.
"We should get the question answered why we're in such a hurry to vote on this bill," Romano said. "We've been hearing some pretty brief presentations over the past week. We could have been debating the bill."
Some committee members also raised concerns about not having a fiscal note in hand to determine how much some of the bill's proposals might cost. Education committee Vice Chairman Craig Blair, R-Berkeley, told members that the finance committee, which he also chairs, will look at the bill's cost.
"The finance committee has been working as we've watched the bill come through," Blair said. "Many of the pieces of this bill have been around for years and have had fiscal notes attached to them in the past. We're actually putting together a diagram so you can go back and look at the last couple of years and see what the fiscal notes were."
The bill creates West Virginia's first public charter school program for counties or multiple counties to implement together. It creates education savings accounts for parents to use for education expenses, ranging from textbooks and tutoring to private or home school education.
The 5 percent pay raise for teachers and school service personnel is in the bill, as are provisions to dock teacher pay during a work stoppage and eliminate seniority as the sole criteria for deciding reductions in force.
Some of the incentives in the bill include increased pay for math teachers, differential pay for counties to pay teachers more in high-need subjects, and the ability for counties to raise their levy rates.
But unions have raised concerns about other provisions of the bill. These include raising the teacher-student radio from 25 students per teacher to 28 students, requiring union approval from teachers before deducting dues from pay checks, as well as the charter school and education savings account proposals.
Several unions, including the West Virginia Education Association and the state chapter of the American Federation of Teachers, plan to call a press conference Monday at 11 a.m. at the state Capitol in Charleston to rally opposition to the bill.